Socket 940 Roundup: Motherboards for the Athlon64 FX
by Wesley Fink on December 18, 2003 1:39 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
ASUS: Tech Support and RMA
While we retested all Socket 940 motherboards for this roundup, the two new boards that are included are both from Asus. It therefore made sense to take a look at Asus' Technical Support again since Support and RMA will be a consideration for many trying to decide whether or not to buy an Asus SK8N or SK8V motherboard for their Athlon64 FX.For your reference, we will repost our support evaluation procedure here:
The way our Tech Support evaluation works is first we anonymously email the manufacturer's tech support address(es), obviously not using our AnandTech mail server to avoid any sort of preferential treatment. Our emails (we can and will send more than one just to make sure we are not getting the staff on an “off” day) all contain fixable problems that we have had with our motherboard. We then give the manufacturer up to 72 business hours to respond and then we will report whether or not they responded within the time allotted, and if they were successful in fixing our problems. In case we don't receive a response before the review is published, any future responses will be added to the review, including the total time it took for the manufacturer to respond to our requests.
The idea here is to encourage manufacturers to improve their technical support as well as provide new criteria upon which to base your motherboard purchasing decisions. As motherboards become more similar every day, we have to help separate the boys from the men in as many ways as possible. As usual, we are interested in your feedback on this and other parts of our reviews, so please do email us with your comments.
Things have been changing recently at Asus, and frankly, we were pleasantly surprised to receive a reply from Asus Technical Support in 61 hours. This is the first time in recent memory that Asus has met our 72-hour response deadline. While one incident may be a fluke, we hope this is the first indication that Asus is making changes in their Technical Support procedures. Only consistent performance over time will provide a clear answer.
Several months ago, Asus revised their web site to include a clear and readable RMA policy on their site. We've reposted ASUS' RMA policy for your convenience:
Dear Sir/Madam Please provide the following information so that we may process your request for warranty repair service. Once we have obtained that information from you, we will issue an RMA # and provide the proper shipping instructions. Please read and provide all of the information below. We cannot complete your request, if all of the information below is not provided.This is a reasonably clear RMA policy without all the convoluted wording that could confuse some end users.
Thank you, ASUS Computer International
PLEASE PROVIDE US WITH:ASUS Computer International (USA) is a warranty repair service center. Please contact place of purchase for credit, refund, upgrade, or advance replacement. Asus does not provide these services under any circumstances.
- THE MODEL & SERIAL NUMBER OFF OF YOUR PRODUCT model (name of product) serial# (10 digits/characters long, no dashes).
- YOUR FULL NAME/NAME OF COMPANY (Only provide company name if the shipping address is to a company).
- YOUR SHIPPING ADDRESS (no PO boxes please).
- YOUR DAYTIME PHONE/FAX NUMBER.
ASUS does not cover physical damage. Please refer to page 2 of your users manual. There is a $15.00 fee to replace a broken socket. There is a $40.00 fee to repair all other physical damage. If a product is not repairable, the product will be sent back to the customer. If a product is sent in with physical damage and is not accompanied with a payment, the product will be rejected and customers will not be reimbursed for shipping charges. A payment can be made by check, money order (payable to ASUS), or a credit card#. The payment must be sent in with the damaged product. Customers from Canada must make payments with a credit card #.
The following procedures should be used to contact Asus Support and RMA on the web:
- Click the “contact ASUS” hyperlink on their North American (U.S.) web page.Here, you will find several international contact listings, including the North American contact information, which will read Asus Computer International (AMERICA).
- Click on the http://helpdesk.asus.com hyperlink, which will connect you to their support website. In the lower left hand corner, there will be a hyperlink that reads “ASUS RMA Online”, and three options will appear.
- Go to the option that reads “issue a new RMA online”, where you will be immediately taken to their online RMA form.
ASUS' tech support is also available on the same website as their RMA and warranty information. The ASUS tech support email address is tsd@asus.com, or you can try to reach ASUS at (502) 995-0883 in the U.S. Press “3” on your phone for full access. One positive aspect of ASUS' tech support is their phone line hours, which are from 5:30 AM to 5:00 PM (Pacific Standard Time).
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AnonymouseUser - Saturday, December 20, 2003 - link
Since this review is for the Athlon64 FX motherboards, shouldn't the links for the "Anandtech Deals" (just below the title) be for Athlon64 FX (socket 940) instead of the non-FX 3200+ (socket 754)?O_o
Wesley Fink - Saturday, December 20, 2003 - link
#7 -The scores with the 11/03 nVidia platform drivers combined with Catalyst 3.9 and the latest BIOS' we tested have dropped the GunMetal 2 benchmarks to those reported in this review. We have discussed the very unusual GunMetal scores we got in the past with Yeti Studios who is looking into the scores.
At this point, we are concerned that the GunMetal 2 bechmarks are really telling us very little about the performance of the boards and systems we are testing. Unless Yeti can update or explain what we have been seeing in Socket 940 scores, we will likely drop GunMetal 2 from our benchmarks.
We apologize for the confusion regarding GunMetal 2 bechmarks, but we have shared with you over several reviews our growing skepticism over their validity in benchmarking FX and Opteron.
TrogdorJW - Friday, December 19, 2003 - link
#7, if you look at those benchmarks in question, the results are HIGHLY questionable in the original benchmarks. They even mentioned it at the bottom of the page:"The astounding scores in GunMetal 2 by the Dual-Channel Opteron and Athlon64 FX51 are difficult to explain, since they are not duplicated by our single-channel Athlon64 benchmark. We were convinced that these scores on the original Opteron must be a fluke until they showed up again in our tests and retest of the K8NNXP-940 Dual-Channel."
My bet is that the earlier versions of the GunMetal benchmark were in some way flawed. Perhaps it was a driver issue, and the game was really only rendering about 2/3 of the screens that it was reporting. Given that all the other systems appear to be close to maxed out on frame rate by the graphics card, the FX and Opteron scores were initially incorrect and have now been fixed.
justly - Friday, December 19, 2003 - link
Wesley Fink, I have had issues with previous Anandtech articles and I thought (or at least was hopefull) that they would happen less often with some of the new staff. I now regret being so hopefull as I am still seeing the same problem.What I would like to know is what would cause the gun metal benchmarks on the Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 to drop 25% or more since the review of that same board on 9 Oct (there was even a link to this article on page one).
I realize that the motherboard and video drivers have changed along with some hardware, and BOIS updates mentioned on page 1 (stating that they "offering improved performance and added features"). The thing is that none of these changes should lead to this kind of preformance hit. What is the story here, was there a mistake in benchmarking, if so what article is correct, if not how do you explain this since most of the other benchmarks on this board varied (an estimated)5% or less.
Icewind - Friday, December 19, 2003 - link
Doubtful #5 as there is no BIOS option to enable or disable it for the VIA boards.bex0rs - Friday, December 19, 2003 - link
The integrated LAN on the SK8N is 10/100 only, not gigabit as mentioned several times.http://www.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=SK8N&langs...
http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/products1-2.asp...
Also, would there be any way to run the HT bus on the VIA boards at 600 to make a determination if that is the limiting factor on nV's implementation?
Wesley Fink - Thursday, December 18, 2003 - link
#1 - You are correct, and page 4 has been corrected. The SATA ports for the SK8N were correctly stated as 2 in the Feature listing for the 4 motherboards.Icewind - Thursday, December 18, 2003 - link
Unless im mistaken #1, is that one right next to the CPU cooler itself in the picture below? Hard to judge from the contrastIcewind - Thursday, December 18, 2003 - link
Best to wait for the 939 pin socket without the unregistered memory modules. I know I will. Paired with a possible PCI Express, SATA 2.0, ATi's 420, 2004 is gonna be a freaking expensive upgrade but better get the best before I finally move outa my folks house.adipose - Thursday, December 18, 2003 - link
http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1936&p=...On this page you state:
The IDE connectors, IDE RAID, and 4 SATA connectors are all in good locations. They should present no problems in most case designs.
But I believe the SK8N only has 2 SATA connectors, and I can only see two on the image.
-Dan